Rulio trudged through the damp jungle, with Marek shuffling along gracelessly behind him. His clothes were soaked, his feet completely waterlogged.

Damn this fog.

Damn this rain.

He wiped the beads of collected raindrops from his brow. His mind raced, flicking between the various issues at hand.

Thinking back, he undertook a mental inventory of the group’s remaining ammunition. The encounter with the dogs actually hadn’t proven too costly, ammunition-wise. He had used a full magazine of .45 ACP, leaving nine left for his Thompson, but he still had all of his pistol ammunition – minus the round he had sent into the second dog’s head. How much ammunition had Keresi and Beck used? He couldn’t recall, exactly. One or two magazines each, at most. Not that it mattered now.

A grim smile turned his mouth. At least Marek still had all his ammunition, having done nothing against the dogs. He was still armed with only his pistol; there was no point having him wave around Keresi’s rifle at his current level of training. Marek’s timidity was frustrating, but Rulio couldn’t really blame him; he seemed as green as late spring grass. Greener than any kid his age should be, indeed confusingly so. But the green would begin to bleed out, soon. It had to.

One final note: Nobody had used any of their grenades.

He was trying to distract himself, and focus on the present. But most of all, Rulio wanted to be with Keresi, although he had seemed stable enough despite his mangled arm. Still, it was his place to be beside his injured friend.

At the same time, the whole point of them being here was to complete the mission – one which he had been led to believe would be a walk in the park, he remembered with annoyance. If they didn’t find the paratroopers, or something to do with them or their fate, then this whole expedition would be for nothing, and Keresi’s injuries would really be meaningless.

And so he sighed and kept walking, reason winning out over sentiment, as it usually did. What had initially begun as a cautious pace had slipped into something faster and careless, as the hours passed and no further threats emerged. The time slid past him in a haze of semi-awareness, as his legs carried him forward with a comfortable, unconscious repetition.

The fog had laid a certain heaviness and tension over him, but it appeared to be devoid of… well, anything.

Except for the dogs – and what strange dogs they had been. He’d noticed some irregularities during his brief investigations of the bodies; nothing major, just a few things that gave him pause. Their size, for a start, was more in line with wolves than any domesticated canine he knew of. And the teeth – large and serrated, and there had been two sets of them, like a shark.

Very strange.

Apart from the dogs, though, everything within the jungle was almost serene, and had been since they left the Raven. There was still no ambient noise, except for the soft tinkling of the rain as it pattered down through the jungle canopy. No animals, no insects. Just the rain and his thoughts for company.

And Marek.

His thoughts turned again towards the newest member of the crew. Marek was puffing slightly behind him, and grumbling softly every so often. Rulio smiled to himself. The kid’s feet must be soaked, too.

Yet, once again, part of Rulio chastised himself. He was being wilfully ignorant at best, and he knew it. He had simply taken in this strange kid they’d found floating in the middle of the ocean. Yes, he was fairly sure Marek wasn’t a spy, or anything else along those lines – it wouldn’t make any sense. But who was he? And where had he come from? As Captain, he knew it was his due diligence to find out. But having Marek in the crew, so soon after what happened with Tobias … it was heartening. Without that youthful energy, it was just him and Keresi – two jaded men cruising around the Pacific, seeking some kind of glory or purpose that he didn’t think either of them could even quantify. And Beck, standing quietly off in the periphery somewhere.

Despite his current near uselessness during combat, Rulio felt certain that Marek belonged in the crew, and that his value would emerge in time. But whether that was simply his own wishful thinking, or a shadow of something real, he couldn’t say.

If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t asking Marek the questions that he should be because he was unwilling to hear the answers, scared of what they would be. Better for Marek to be a clean slate, an easy piece to fill the hole that Tobias had left. He knew that was impossible. No doubt, Marek’s background would reveal itself in due course. But for the time being, Rulio would maintain his ignorance.

For the sake of the crew. Yes, for their sake.

As he continued to walk, he found that his daydreaming was being progressively broken by a dawning awareness of something else.

He realised he could now hear a third set of footsteps, following at a distance behind him. Whoever it was, it seemed from their manner of walking that they were trying to be as quiet as possible, but they weren’t being very successful.

He held up a hand, halting a bewildered Marek, who looked up with wide eyes as Rulio quickly spun around, drew his pistol, and aimed it at the source of the noise.

“Don’t shoot!” yelled a high voice.

Rulio stared at the distant intruder over the pistol’s sights, his eyes slowly narrowing into a glare. “Beck?”

Beck stood awkwardly, looking embarrassed. Her eyes flickered between the parted jet-black curtain of her hair.

Rulio regarded her with increasing storminess. “What are you doing?” he snapped.

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“I came back to help you.” She was putting on an air of self-assuredness, but he could see her shifting her posture uneasily.

“I told you to stay with Keresi,” Rulio said icily, holstering his pistol.

Beck dropped her head, though her eyes flashed. “Actually, you just said to make sure he’s taken care of. He’s bandaged, and the bleeding is under control. He’s as fine as he’s ever going to be, until we get him back to Port. And Muno’s with him.”

Damn that girl’s memory. Rulio’s face softened. “Beck-”

“I just thought you’d need some help,” Beck interrupted. She lifted her head and pointed to Marek. “You can’t just have him with you, he can barely shoot straight.”

He saw Marek wince.

Rulio raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? And have you already forgotten about a certain slippery grenade?” He pinched his chin and squinted. “I seem to remember having an entirely different ship a few days ago.” He shrugged. “Perhaps it was just a dream.”

Beck’s face flushed.

Rulio could feel his anger waning. The girl was stubborn, to a fault at times, but she was here now. Better to keep her with him than send her back through the jungle alone.

“Alright, come with us then,” he said. “I’m not in the mood to argue with you, and you’re not wrong. I could use the backup. Something about this place is…” his sentence trailed off as he looked around at the grey jungle. They all knew what he meant.

Beck nodded, looking more settled, and then they all set off wordlessly, heading for somewhere but not anywhere. Rulio was just following his nose, for good or ill.

Perhaps twenty minutes after they had started walking again, Rulio thought he saw a face out of the corner of his eye, veiled amongst the layers of pale trees; bloodied and tattered. But when he looked up at it with his full attention, there was nothing there. Just a trick of the fog.

Ten minutes later, they stumbled across the clearing.

Within it, arranged in a circle, were about a dozen empty military uniforms, laid out just like they would be if they were being worn. Together, they formed the spokes of a wheel. The helmets, which were lying towards the centre of the wheel, all lay atop the neck of a shirt and jacket, with the pants positioned below those extending down to meet toppled boots.

The wheel’s circumference was formed by human bodies, arranged head-to-toe in a circle around the uniforms. They had all been flayed, the skinless corpses glistening a dark red, and the silver of the thin dog tags chained around their necks shimmered under the dull foglight. Small scraps of skin littered the area around them.

Rulio had seen some sights in his time, but nothing quite like this. The scene was horrific, yet somehow it also seemed to be without malice – as if a child had been too rough with its toys, while acting out some incomprehensible game. There was a playfulness and whimsy to the way the soldier’s bodies had been displayed that made the bile rise in Rulio’s throat.

He turned to the others. Beck was staring staunchly at the grisly scene, though she had gone even whiter than usual. Marek was keeled over, his face quivering, and looked like he was going to be sick at any moment.

So, here at last were the paratroopers.

“What the hell happened here?” Marek asked as he rose up, wiping at his mouth.

It was effectively rhetorical, as Rulio knew nothing about what lay before them, and he doubted Beck did either.

At least they had finally found some evidence, but it was certainly not what he had been expecting. He had assumed that in a best case, they’d find the paratroopers sitting around a nice fire. In a worst case, they would instead all be dead, killed by something or other. But this… what was this? The paratroopers weren’t just dead, they had been arranged.

And they had no skin.

His sense of unease, ever-present since they had entered the fog, skyrocketed. “I don’t know, Marek,” he murmured. “But they can work that out back at the Port Authority, for all I care. Let’s just take what we can and get out of here.” This whole island was like a bad taste in his mouth, and he had nowhere to spit. “I’ll get the dog tags, to take back to Port.”

Rulio walked up to a set of clothes and tapped the length of them with his foot, testing for anything inside. As it had first appeared, they were completely empty.

They all walked slowly around the circle, anxious that something unknown would suddenly happen at any moment. As they did so, Rulio collected the bloodied dog tags from around the wet, fleshy necks of the bodies, and placed them into a pouch on his belt. This would have to do, in terms of evidence. He had no desire to push onwards to find more clues as to the paratroopers’ fate, and any humanitarian care he might once have felt towards them had long evaporated. Beck and Marek walked beside him silently, staring in confusion at the strange arrangement surrounding them. He couldn’t blame them. This was nothing a pair of kids should have to deal with, war or not.

This whole situation felt like a trap, but one with no obvious purpose or mechanism.

It was time to go.

Once he had all the dog tags stashed away, he motioned for them to leave, and they began walking back the way they had come.

Then a thought entered his mind, unwanted: Had the paratroopers been laid out like that for him?

He felt such a frantic urge to leave the clearing far behind him that he struggled not to break into a run.

They had covered perhaps half the distance to the Raven, and Rulio was again deep in thought, when Marek suddenly said “What is that?” from behind him.

Rulio stopped and looked up.

They were in another clearing, and ahead of them was a colossal tree, perhaps a hundred metres tall. Its roots sprawled outwards across the jungle floor, and the thick limbs coiled outwards and upwards like a twisting sea anemone. A blanket of mist clung to the tree’s base, and the grey light filtering down through from the fog above bathed the tree in a soft glow. Most peculiar of all was that in place of leaves or foliage, the limbs were covered with glowing crystalline spines, long and sharp. They were various colours, none particularly natural, and the brightness within them pulsated slowly. It was as though an oak tree had been crossed with a large, luminous cactus.

Marek’s question was apt indeed, for two reasons.

This tree hadn’t been here when they passed through the first time.

Rulio stared at the tree, completely at a loss. Obviously, it was another peculiarity born of the fog, and one markedly less sinister at face value than the remnants of the paratroopers they had found – but as to its true nature, he could only guess.

As he mulled over the tree’s significance, he saw that Marek had begun walking towards it. Rulio had the urge to say something, to warn Marek of possible dangers, but then thought better of it. God knew the kid could do with a bit of initiative. Still, Rulio scanned the jungle’s periphery at the margins of the clearing, preparing for any threats that might emerge.

Marek approached the tree with an urgent trepidation. It looked like he was in a disagreement with himself, his legs willing but his mind not. Whatever the case, his legs seemed to be winning out. Soon, Marek stood at the tree’s base, partially shrouded within the fog that lay there.

Then, he began to climb.

As Rulio watched on, Marek cautiously scaled the tree until he was about halfway up, and then began to shimmy along a bough towards a particularly large spike, swirling with a dark purple light. He sidled up to it, and then placed his hand right next to the pulsing crystal needle, hesitating.

Rulio couldn’t take his eyes away. The kid was actually going to do it.

Marek looked down at Rulio, his eyes uncertain. Rulio gave him a small nod of assent.

Rulio saw Marek breathe in, and then place his hand on the glowing spine. The spine glowed brighter than ever, and then immediately went dim as Marek quickly removed his hand.

Rulio exhaled.

Having survived his initial contact with the crystal, Marek gripped it again with confidence, and began to pull. The spiny purple shard sporadically flashed brilliant blues and whites across its surface as he did so, until he had removed it from the tree entirely, at which point the light within subsided into a stable pulse of dark violet.

Marek sat on the bough, holding his prize and grinning down at them.

Rulio smiled back.

Now, here before him, he saw someone who might prove a worthy successor to Tobias.